Consumers deserve to know the facts on agriculture's contribution to carbon sequestration, farmers say as misinformation on emissions and offset capacity in the sector continues to circulate.
NSW Farmers Conservation and Resource Management Committee member Oscar Pearse said a recent report by the Climate Change Authority was just one example of these mistruths, with the report claiming millions of hectares of Australian farmland must be converted into forest to meet emissions reductions targets.
"The real science doesn't lie - agriculture has reduced its emissions by 78% since 2005 and remains well on track to make further, significant reductions in emissions in the near future," Mr Pearse said.
"Forest cover has actually increased, not decreased, since 2007, and Australian farmers are driving a huge number of carbon sequestration activities and projects on-farm to hold carbon in soils or trees, both under management programs and informally.
"Be it large corporates or governments, locking up an area of farmland larger than Tasmania just because it's the cheap and easy fix to offset carbon is simply unconscionable.
"Implying that farmers must sell up productive land for offsets won't do anything for the environment - but it will mean we can't grow the food or fibre we need to feed our population, or the rest of the world."
The report's suggestions that Australians need to eat alternative proteins or kangaroo instead of beef or lamb to reduce carbon emissions were also categorically incorrect, Mr Pearse said, with peer-reviewed science all pointing to red meat as a sustainable protein with continuing reductions in emissions intensity.
"The report's claims that cereal, fruit and vegetable growers will only be able to reduce emissions by reducing their fertiliser usage is only going to massively reduce yields and food supply, while ignoring the better practices and tools which these farmers are using to drive emissions down," Mr Pearse said.
"Suggestions by this report that we need to eat less red meat, grow less cereal crops, produce less vegetables and lose highly productive land for a century to reduce emissions are also totally senseless, and this is just scraping the surface when it comes to what's wrong with this report.
"Our own Minister for Climate Change and Energy has assured us that there will not be any emissions targets or taxes imposed on agriculture, as the only sector in the Australian economy which has improved its emissions performance over 30 years.
"A serious revision of this report is much needed, so it's actually drawing on the scientific and economic facts and aligning with Commonwealth government policies on emissions reduction - or else businesses, agricultural communities and consumers will simply have to ignore it."
